Oscar has never liked the holidays
and all the surrounding rigmarole, but that doesn't stop his best friend from
dragging him along for her Black Friday shopping spree. The only perk of the
day is that he meets Nathan while he's there.

With sparkling blue eyes, curly
blond hair, and a smile that won't stop, Nathan is a Christmas elf in the
flesh. He even spends his days in a workshop! But Nathan is more than his
bright smile, and he may be just the right person for Oscar. Assuming, of
course, Oscar doesn't drive him and his holiday spirit away first.

He grumbled as they were forced to
swerve around another mother with two shopping carts. “If you didn’t want me
grumpy, then maybe you shouldn’t have dragged me out shopping on Black Friday.”

“You’re my best friend—”

“Which means you shouldn’t torture
me like this.”

“Who else am I going to take?”

“Your mother?”

Eye roll.

“Your sister-in-law?”

Eye roll.

“Cindy?”

“I love the girl, but she doesn’t
really know my family. And she can’t spot a sale to save her life.”

“I can’t spot sales!”

“But you know my family. Oh! I wanna
hit this one.”

He sighed as he was dragged—yes,
dragged—into Another Store. Under his breath, he muttered, “You could go
alone.”

She continued on, oblivious. Or at
least very good at faking it. He hoped this earned him some major points.

“What do you think of this?” She
held up a cashmere-blend sweater in baby blue.

“For who?”

Her lips puckered in moue. “Me.”

“I thought we were shopping for your
friends and family.” He mock glared. Well, mostly mock.

Marie flapped her hand at him. “Just
tell me.”

He sighed and glanced over to the
picked-through selection. “It’s gorgeous, but is it even in your size?”

She bounced—like she hadn’t even
considered that, somehow—and twirled back to the rack, furiously searching
through the remaining sweaters. She chirped and pulled out a much larger size
in what Oscar could only call puce, folded it over her arm, and returned to the
baby-blue ones. “I’ll have to ask if they have more in the bac— Oh my god, look
at that sale!” She tossed the blue sweater to him. “Can you find a salesperson,
and ask if they have a small? I need to be over there!”

And she was gone. Which left him
with two options: say no and be a horrible friend, or say yes and tear through
the crowds to find an overworked, overstressed salesperson. Joy.

With a sigh, he searched for someone
in the store’s dress-coded uniform, and wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a
curse when he spotted the cute guy smiling winsomely, surrounded by a mob of
people. The most attractive thing was that his mob was smaller than the mob
surrounding all the other salespeople.

Gritting his teeth, he clenched the
sweater and elbowed his way over through arguing women, grumbling men, and a
few screaming children. And that was only across six feet.

When he finally arrived at his
destination, he noticed his salesperson was six inches shorter than him, with
curly blond hair, and wearing an elf hat. He had shimmering blue eyes and
apple-round cheeks. He couldn’t possibly be real.

The bright-blue eyes flashed up to
Oscar with a literal sparkle in his eye, although that had to be the overhead
lights. “Hello! How can I help you?”

Despite his elfish appearance, the
dude’s voice wasn’t high-pitched. In fact, to keep with the ridiculous metaphor
developing in Oscar’s mind, it was more like caramel or hot chocolate. It was
almost enough to make him forget where he was.

And then some jackass elbowed him in
the back, hard, and he was shoved forward. He growled and pushed back, not
taking his eyes off his little elf helper. “Hi. I was wondering if you have
more sizes of this in the back? I need a small.” He held up the sweater in
question.

The little elf’s lips puckered in
thought. “I can check, sir, but I think what we have out is all we have. Wait
right here.”

He was gone in a flash, and Oscar
was left standing there, blinking at the space where the man had been.

“Ex-scuse me,” a woman lashed out.
“Can we not stand in the middle of the aisle, puh-lease?”

He heaved a sigh and stepped
back—the six inches he could—to let the woman pass. She scrunched her nose at
him and hurried on to the next big sale. Restraining another sigh, he wished he
could close his eyes and sink into the floor, or vanish, or at least run the
hell out of here. But no, he waited, like a good friend, for the salesperson to
return. And it seemed to be taking forever, but he was sure that was his
imagination—and frustration—playing tricks on him.

Glancing around, he checked on where
Marie was, because today he wouldn’t put it past her to leave without him or
the sweater, and found her almost swallowed up in the jewelry section. He
nodded and looked back to where his elf had been, only to find his helper had
reappeared, cheeks rosier, curls somehow unrulier, and elf hat slightly
crooked.

“Good news! There was one small
tucked behind another bunch.” He held up a slightly rumpled blue sweater.
“Looks like it may have gotten missed when the stock was brought out. It
doesn’t look damaged or anything, but feel free to inspect it and let me know…”

The guy trailed off, probably
because Oscar was staring at his hat. It shouldn’t have been humanly possible
for a disheveled hat to make him that much cuter. But it did. Oscar slung the
sweater he was still holding over his shoulder, reached out, righted the
salesperson’s hat, and then tucked a particularly rebellious curl under the
rim. There. He smiled. Much better.

Oscar’s eyes shot down to meet those
sparkling blues. “Oh! Sorry. It was… You must have knocked it when you were
getting the sweater. So I… It was only right that I help. Thank you. For the
sweater.”

Certainly not for the pounding of
his heart. He held out his hand for the top.

The elf’s uncertain, wide eyes
scrunched up with his grin. “Thank you for fixing it.”

He really had the bluest eyes. It
seemed like they would have to be contacts, but Oscar didn’t think even a
company could manufacture that pure a blue.

“Ex-scuse me!”

Oh hell, it was the woman from
before. Oscar couldn’t move much and was about to tell the woman she could
probably go around, but the little elf flashed a customer’s-always-right
expression and glided over, clearing the aisle and putting not much between
them but the sweater.

Oscar’s breath caught. The little
elf beamed up at him.

“Is there anything else I can help
you with today, sir?”

Oscar had some ideas. Some very
dirty ideas, actually. But then the elf blinked, casting a glance at the chaos
surrounding them, and Oscar remembered now wasn’t a good time to be hitting on
a salesperson.

And that he was waist-deep in Black
Friday. He groaned and slid his fingers around the small sweater, gently taking
it.

“I think this will be all. Thank you
very much,” he murmured—well, as much as he could murmur and still be heard in
this mess.

The elf’s smile widened—if that was
possible, and somehow it was—and his eyebrows lifted with the excitement strewn
across his face. “Well, I hope you have a good day. And I really hope you come
back again sometime.”

Then, just like that, Oscar’s
helpful little elf was swallowed up by the crowd.

The cheerful good-bye was probably a
standard store requirement, Oscar told himself as he turned to hunt down Marie.
It almost certainly wasn’t to entice him to return just to see his elf again.
The guy probably wasn’t interested.

Oscar sighed. Though his eyes had
seemed to light up when they’d been pressed together. And he hadn’t minded
Oscar taking certain privileges with his hat. And he had been so very helpful.
Which, yeah, it was his job, but…

A tiny tot ran into his shin, the
mother glared at him, probably for standing in space that her child wanted to
occupy. When he looked around, he realized he’d lost where Marie was.

“Goddamn it!”

Several glares were shot his way. He
didn’t care, though.

“Did you find someone?” popped
Marie’s voice from behind him.

He spun around, clenching both
sweaters to his chest. “Jesus!”

“You found one!”

“Yes, I found one,” he snapped,
shoving the smaller size at her. When his hand was free, he began searching out
the original location, but even with his height advantage, the store was a
swirl of bodies and colors. He glared at Marie. “And you can put the other one
back.”

She pouted. “But you’re supposed to
be helping me—” She clicked her jaw shut at his glare. “I mean, you found one
in my size, so thank you so much! Let’s go return this one to the rack.”

She led the deceptively easy way
back to the sweaters and hung it up. “Okay, with that done, let’s get on with
the day.”

He groaned, knowing that the best
part of the day had already walked away.

If there are two types of people in
the world, Alex Whitehall probably isn’t one of them, despite being a person.
Their favorite pastimes include reading, horseback riding, sleeping, watching
geek-tastic television, knitting, eating, and running. And wasting time on the
internet. And spending glorious afternoons laughing with friends.

While Alex prefers sleeping over
doing anything else (except maybe eating), sometimes they emerges from the cave
to be social and to hunt for food at the local market. They can be found
blogging, searching the Internet for more books to read, and tending after
their aloe plant Cornwall. That’s a lie; the single plant has become an entire
forest.